What better gift for small ones than this classic in its fine, fiftieth anniversary edition? It’s historic in being the first picture book to show an African-American main character — even better, it’s an insightful, potent story of a child’s wonder. Peter ventures out into the first snowfall, marveling at his footprints, making snow angels and snowmen, and sliding down a great, soft heap before returning home. Keats’ subtle, stylish collage illustrations convey a world of thought, character and feeling — especially of the child’s intent, wondering mind.

Mouse and Lion,

Aesop, retold by Rand Burkert, Illustrations Nancy Ekholm Burkert

Scholastic, 32 pages, $19.95

2-5 years

Also in the realm of classics, this version of Aesop’s fable about a mouse who first offends a lion, and then saves him, is exceptionally beautiful, with large pages, fine, tiny brush strokes and abiding attention to nature in all its detail — especially to the African grass mouse who is the hero of the story. Burkert’s text is poetic and dramatic (a great read-aloud) and Ekholm Burkert’s art celebrates variety and specificity in the natural world. As for Aesop’s fables — they’re the longest-standing “children’s stories” to be continuously available — since before the first century, C.E.!

Sita’s Ramayana

Text Samhita Arni; Illustrations Moyna Chitrakar

Groundwood, 152 pages, $24.95

Ages 10 and up

The eventful, tumultuous story of Sita and Rama, a classic, ancient Indian poem, is given ferociously intense, suitably bewildering life in this graphic novel version sure to expand the horizons of any young graphic novel enthusiast. Stolen away from her beloved husband Rama, Sita is imprisoned by a demon king. After years of resisting his advances, she’s freed by an army of magical animals and gods — only to find that Rama no longer trusts her fidelity. Big eyes, heavy black lines and stylized figures of yellow, blue, purple and red emphasize the endless dramatic turns and passions of the story.

From Then to Now: A Short History of the World

By Christopher Moore; illustrations, Andrej Krystoforski

Tundra, 188 pages, $27.99

Ages 10-14

“The world is bringing all those different ways [of being human] together again,” Moore says of today’s globalized populations at the end of this ambitious work. Beginning with hunter-gatherers he summarizes the growth and fall of empires, religions and civilizations almost everywhere, from the prehistoric past to today's global changes. This reads like an unusually palatable textbook, and with its necessary generalizations will, one hopes, spur young readers to explore further. Winner of this year’s Governor-General’s Award for children’s literature.

Blink and Caution

By Tim Wynne-Jones

Candlewick, 342 pages, $19.00

Ages 13 and up

If your young reader would prefer a knockdown, suspenseful, sizzlingly poetic thriller, try the book that was short-listed, but didn’t win the Governor-General’s Award (it won, however, the coveted Boston Globe/Horn Book Award). The pitch of eventfulness and uncertainty sustained throughout this mystery is both outer and inner, a matter of plot, the characters’ complicated inner tensions, and Wynne-Jones’ prose style — poetic, jaunty, smart-ass, lyrical and perfectly off-kilter, a style that makes reading always interesting. The fact that it’s set in Toronto and backwoods Ontario doesn’t do it any harm either.

Chanukah Lights

By Michael J. Rosen; illustrations Robert Sabuda

Candlewick, 16 pages, $40.00

Ages 4-8

This pop-up is technically impressive — a paper-engineering fantasy that roams from a temple of the second century B.C.E. to a modern city — but it stands out also because it’s both a holiday book and an evocation of the history of a people, from then to now, as it were.

A Season of Gifts,

By Richard Peck

Penguin, 164 pages, $8.50

Ages 10 and up

For that last little paperback, who doesn’t need something funny and nostalgic? Peck’s account of a 1958 Christmas in rural Illinois has as its hero inimitable Grandma Dowdel, a non-church-going, non-neighbourly woman who doesn’t wait for Christmas to give out her gifts.

Deirdre Baker teaches children's lit at the U of T.

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